The Alchemist of London Read online

  But Wyatt was also searching for the book. He was probably making enquiries at that moment. How many houses in Chelsea matched the description in Price’s letter?

  After breakfast, Elise returned to her room. She took a coin out of her pouch and hid the rest in the drawers next to her bed.

  “Is it far to Chelsea?” she asked Madame Rochelle when she came downstairs.

  “No, not far at all. Chelsea is to the south of here.”

  “And the Physicians’ Garden?”

  “I believe it is on the Thames. Is that where you intend to go today?” Madame Rochelle’s eyes flickered. “I thought you might visit the dressmaker.”

  Elise’s hands went to her black silk dress.

  “Let me speak with my friend in Regent Street, Madame Valerie,” Madame Rochelle added. “I am sure she will have a lovely dress for you.”

  Madame Rochelle said no more but swayed out of the room in her fashionable skirts. Elise caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror above the fireplace. She smoothed down the black dress and frowned.

  But she had more important tasks to do. An insipid sun seeped through the clouds as she set off for Chelsea. At first her spirits were high. As she passed each square she hoped to see the river ahead. But the streets led onto more streets and soon the rumble of carts and carriages caused her head to ache.

  Reaching a busy high street, she tried to quell the flutter in her stomach and the pounding in her ears. London was far bigger than she thought.

  More lanes and courtyards lay ahead. She came across an open field, where plants grew in long beds. She stopped to ask whether this was the Physicians’ Garden.

  “No, ma’am, the Physicians’ Garden is down by the river,” a squint-eyed gardener pointed.

  Further on she entered a courtyard and saw an apothecary. That was a good sign. Albert Price had said he lived near an apothecary. But she was still far from the Physicians’ Garden. In the next street she saw another apothecary, and a few streets away, another. Unease rose in a wave. How would she ever find the house?

  At last, almost an hour later, she smelt the Thames. Emerging onto the banks, she stared at all the boats and bridges, and the smoky outline of the city in the distance.

  Albert Price had written that Chelsea was a pleasant place, but that morning the stench from the river was sour and the whistle and screech from the steamboats constant.

  Sweat prickled her brow. Her chest was tight. She turned away from the river. Opening the gate onto a leafy square, she sat down on a stone bench.

  There was a rosebush next to her, but the petals had curled up and turned brown. She caught a petal as it fell. The thin veins were hard. She let the petal fall to the ground. Turning over her own hand, she saw a barely perceptible change.

  The process was beginning. The elixir’s power was fading. True alchemists lived forever or until they no longer had the will to live. But was Elise a true alchemist? Deep down she feared she had stumbled across alchemy’s secrets by accident. She had no formal training or nobility. She had drunk the elixir by chance and done little with her knowledge. Wasn’t there a natural order to life? She did not deserve eternal youth. She had defied nature long enough, and now her time was coming to an end.

  A hollowness filled her chest, a hollowness she had pushed away every day for the last twenty-five years. Now she let it seep through her, knowing she could not deny it any longer. It was a truth she did not want to face. When Albert Price had died, part of her died too, and her heart was broken. She felt the pain where it had been crushed. She had carried this pain for too long. She had no elixir to heal a broken heart.

  After Price’s death, she had been all alone. Except for Jean-Louis Champillon. He had begun to change, losing his arrogance as the reality of their new world set in. He had often been kind and understanding, her only friend in the years after the fire. But hadn’t she left him voluntarily, deciding to face the world on her own? She had been obstinate and angry with him, blaming him for what happened to Price, certain she could never forgive him.

  Like the elements in an alchemist’s laboratory, they had separated, and now she was really on her own.

  Her breath came in rasps. Her eyes watered in the hot sun.

  The past was the past, and the previous years were lost forever. Her inertia was her choice. She had one last duty however, and that was to preserve the secrets of alchemy. She had to find Albert Price’s book before Barnabas Wyatt.

  But how would she find it?

  Defeated, she made her way home.

  “You are so pale,” Madame Rochelle said, when she returned.

  Elise walked unsteadily into the parlour. She felt worse than she wanted to admit. Disappointment at her failure to find the house in Chelsea mixed with genuine physical exhaustion.

  “Madame Valerie is coming by this afternoon to fit me for a new dress,” Madame Rochelle added. “I have told her to bring some dresses for you.” Her eyes slid over Elise’s gown again. “I do think you will look much better in something brighter and more - modern.”

  Elise’s eyelids flickered weakly. She went upstairs and lay down. The maid knocked sometime later to say the dressmaker had come. Elise pressed her face into the pillow. She was so tired and did not feel like going downstairs. When the maid knocked again, she reluctantly got up. She glanced at her black dress, certain there was nothing wrong with it.

  When she reached the hall she heard Madame Rochelle talking excitedly in French.

  She opened the parlour door. The new dresses were laid out on the table.

  “Here she is,” Madame Rochelle declared.

  Madame Valerie gave Elise a careful look and nodded. “Oh yes, the dress is too old-fashioned.”

  “I like this one,” Madame Rochelle said, lifting a red and white striped gown with a large hooped skirt.

  “I’m not sure. It is very bright,” Elise said, to the frowns of the two women. “Perhaps that one.”

  The dressmaker smiled, taking the midnight blue gown in her arms. Elise slipped it on behind a screen and stepped into the room. Madame Rochelle and the dressmaker sighed appreciatively. There were only a few adjustments to be made.

  “Much better,” Madame Valerie said.

  “The other dress was almost a widow’s gown,” Madame Rochelle said. “And you are too young to be a widow.”

  Elise smiled uncertainly, shyly gazing at her pale face in the mirror above the mantelpiece. The new fabric was so vivid and shiny. She saw the difference at once.

  “I will finish the adjustments and deliver the gown tomorrow,” Madame Valerie said.

  That night, Elise sat down to a meal of stewed beef, vegetables, sweet tart and jelly. She slept well, succumbing to an exhaustion she had never known before. In the morning, a carriage arrived with the dresses. The midnight blue dress was brought to her room. Slipping on her new dress, she felt a thrill of excitement. Madame Rochelle was right. It was time to end her mourning.

  She was still tired, but determined to continue her search. That day she decided to find the Physicians’ Garden. Madame Rochelle suggested a hansom cab and the servant hailed one on the street. As the cab rolled through the congested and confusing streets, Elise was glad she did not walk, for Chelsea was much further than she thought.

  At last the cab arrived before a walled garden. Elise found her way to the main gate. She followed the shady paths between the flowerbeds and the greenhouses. The gardeners looked at her curiously, but did not question her. A lady in a fine dress must know what she was doing.

  This was a true physicians’ garden, full of plants valuable to medicine and alchemy. Albert Price would have enjoyed walking these paths. But looking at the endless rooftops of the surrounding houses, she fought back a similar feeling to the day before.

  Albert Price was a great walker, so when he wrote that he was close to the Physicians’ Garden, he might mean a mile away. The clues could apply to any house. Elise left the garden, ignoring the sinking feeling in her
heart.

  What did an alchemist look for in a house? She closed her eyes, wishing she could ask him, praying for a sign.

  The day wore on and the sun pierced the clouds as she walked along the riverside. A perfect early October sun, with the power to ignite the elixirs. As the sun began to sink, a ghostly moon was already appearing. The panorama reminded her of the books of alchemy, with their illustrations of suns and moons in harmony. This stretch of river would be the perfect place for a laboratory.

  Just as Albert Price had observed.

  Not here, where she stood, with the shadows creeping over the ground. But the rooftops far ahead, where the sun glinted.

  Elise tilted her head. There was only one row of houses where the sunbeams and the moon converged. A row of tall, elegant houses lining the Thames, old houses, old enough to watch over the river centuries before.

  The old houses of Cheyne Walk.

  She ran further, her heart beating fast, guided by the rays of the setting sun.

  Chapter Ten

  Elise stood in the fading light before a tall house. Sunbeams glinted off the attic window. Inside, a woman was moving back and forth on the first floor under the light of a chandelier. The woman passed by the window and paused.

  Elise gathered her cloak and turned away. But before she had gone far, she heard a door open behind her.

  “May I help you?”

  The woman was standing in the doorway of the house. She wore a dress with wide sleeves and a bustle, and her brown hair was in a low bun. Her face had a curious expression of longing, as though she had just recognised a long-forgotten acquaintance.

  “You must excuse me, madam,” Elise bowed her head politely. “I had a friend who once lived in this neighbourhood.”

  “A friend?”

  “It was many years ago.”

  The woman took a step outside. “What was your friend’s name?”

  “I am sure you do not know him. I am sorry to disturb you.”

  “Please don’t go - would you like to come inside for a moment?”

  The woman’s eyes were trusting and pleading. Elise walked up the steps and followed the woman into a hall. The aroma of roast beef drifted up from the kitchen, mingled with other smells of herbs and vegetables.

  “The servants are preparing dinner. Please come through,” the woman said.

  The walls of the parlour were covered with richly patterned wallpaper and the drapes were tied back with silk tassels. Ferns grew in pots near the window next to a velvet couch. A fire crackled in the grate, and its warmth filled the room. There were a few items of an earlier period, like the tall bookcases and side tables, suggesting a long residence.

  The woman was older than Elise had first thought, and grey streaks glittered in her thick dark hair. Her brown eyes roamed Elise’s face as though she were seeing someone she hadn’t seen in a long time.

  “Let me take your cloak,” the woman said. “My maid is upstairs and I won’t bother her. Your dress is so pretty.”

  “Thank you.”

  “You are not from England?”

  “I am from France. My name is Elise – Ellie Forrest.”

  “I am most delighted to meet you. I am Anne Milton. Please warm yourself,” the woman raised her hands to the fire. “Tell me about your friend.”

  Elise took a deep breath, not sure how to begin. “My friend lived here many years ago. In the year 1810.”

  “1810?” the woman said. “My father had a lodger at that time. I was a child then, about eight years old, but I remember our visitor well. May I ask his name?”

  “Mr. Albert Price.”

  Anne clasped her fingers nervously. “That was the name of our lodger.”

  For a moment there was silence, as though the discovery hung in the air, a surprise to both of them.

  Elise recovered. “How did your father know him?”

  Anne touched her hair and gazed ahead as though she were searching for memories that were long buried. “I do not recall my father ever speaking of Albert Price before that year. Then one evening my father received a note. I saw him reading it in this very room. My father had a serious face and I knew not to disturb him. He placed the note on the table and went to that bookcase.

  “I saw him take out an old parchment. He unfolded it and a key slid out. My father put the key in his pocket. He walked straight past me and up the stairs.

  “You must understand this was very out of character. My father was a man of trade and always responsible. I had never seen him act so mysteriously.

  “Late that night a carriage came along the Walk. A man climbed out of the carriage and my father led him inside. The servants carried packing cases into the house. Usually my father entertained guests in the dining room or the parlour. But that night the footsteps were going up the stairs past my door. Then I heard someone moving overhead.

  “Before Albert Price came, I did not know the attic existed. The door at the top of the stairs was always locked and Nanny and I thought there was only a cupboard beyond. But there must have been a room there all along. I realised that the key was kept with the old letter. It was all very strange, although as a child, I accepted it without thinking. It was as though the attic had always been there, waiting for Mr. Price to return.”

  Anne paced the room and gave Elise a confused, fearful look.

  “Go on please, Mrs. Milton.”

  “The next day my father, mother and my brother, Thomas, all sat down to breakfast in the morning room as usual. I started to think I had imagined the night before. But then my father said that we had a visitor who would be staying for a while. Mr. Albert Price was a very wise man and we were not to disturb him or go to the attic. My mother and brother nodded but I was bursting with curiosity. I had heard footsteps pacing and wondered who this stranger was, who hadn’t slept until dawn.

  “I imagined Albert Price must be elderly and irritable. But one day I was playing on the landing and a young man came down the stairs. He was no older than my oldest brother. I hid behind my door but he saw me. Instead of being annoyed, he smiled. After that, he would greet me each morning. I wasn’t scared from then on. He was always so finely dressed in velvet coats, breeches and shiny boots. The summer he was here was a very happy one.”

  Anne Milton closed her eyes and opened them, as if waking from a dream.

  “Did you know why he had come here?”

  “My father said he was a scientist. I believe he often went to the Physicians’ Gardens in Chelsea. Mr. Price took great interest in what we grew in our garden. I kept a book of dried flowers and wrote down all the names of the plants and things I noticed each season. He asked me if he could read it, which made me very proud of course, as no one else paid attention to me then. One day he asked me which flower I wish I had, and I said roses, for we had none. A few days later he brought me a bottle of seeds and helped me plant them. After he had gone, the most wonderful rose bush bloomed.”

  “How long did he stay?”

  Frown lines appeared on Anne Milton’s brow. “I knew his time here was limited. It’s true he could have stayed longer, for we all enjoyed his company. But there was always a melancholy about him. It was as though the winds of winter would take him away and his days with us would soon be over. But he did not have to leave because of the change of seasons. There was another reason.”

  Anne moved the glowing logs with a poker. Her face clouded over and her words came more slowly. “My father was an upright man, honest and respected, and I am sure that Mr. Price was too. But I was aware toward the end of the summer of great danger. My father’s friends often locked themselves in the parlour. When they came out their faces were strained. Then one afternoon, Nanny and I met Mr. Price in Hyde Park. A man was watching us. Mr. Price grew tense. He told us to go ahead and pretend we did not know him.

  “No longer did Mr. Price go out. The house had a shadow over it. Once I saw a man from my window standing by the river and I could not sleep all night.

&n
bsp; “And shortly after that Albert Price was gone, in the same way he arrived. A carriage arrived in the middle of the night. He did not say goodbye but I understood. I was glad he was leaving us because I knew he would be safe.

  “After he had gone, my father called all the servants together and told them not to speak about Mr. Price to anyone. He gave them each several shillings. I heard them gossip afterwards, but none of them knew the truth, and the shillings were enough to keep them silent.

  “As the years went by, I think we all forgot there was a room beyond the attic door. It all seemed like a dream or a fairytale. The memories faded like my childhood.”

  Anne fell silent. Her eyes had a faraway look.

  “But you never forgot,” Elise said.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Did you ever go to the attic again?”

  “Not since that time. But when my father was on his deathbed, he called me to him. He said he had a great responsibility to entrust to me. I was not sure what use I could possibly be, as my brothers handled all my father’s business. But my father said I was the only one who would understand. It was a duty that his father had given to him and his father to him. He had to tell me, so I would know what to do when the time came. It might happen suddenly, or it may not happen in my lifetime. But if it did, he told me what I must do.”

  Anne crossed to the bookcase and unlocked the door. She took something out from behind the books.

  “This is the letter my father was reading the night Albert Price arrived. It is a letter dated 1688, and it is signed by my ancestor, Sir John Bingham. No one outside my family has ever read it, but Miss Elise, I am happy for you to see it.”

  Elise took the parchment. Her eyes followed the faded looping writing:

  “If ye should learn of the presence in London of a certain stranger, who goes by the name of Albert Price, I beg ye give him sanctuary in your house.

  He will know the room he requires, for he has lived there before. But I also urge ye never to speak of what thou seest there and to keep his presence a great secret.”